Late Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Anthony Shadid Featured in World Literature Today

March 16, 2012
Anthony Shadid

The March/April 2012 issue of World Literature Today will feature the work of New York Times Beirut bureau chief Anthony Shadid (1968-2012). In this issue, WLT’s Matt Carney interviews Shadid as part of a special section devoted to International Literary Journalism. Shadid discusses his forthcoming book House of Stone (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, March 2012) and reflects on his coverage of the Middle East as a journalist for the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and the New York Times. The interview showcases Shadid’s courage as a reporter covering a troubled region and his response to the great challenges to humanity he witnessed during his years in the region. Despite the death and destruction all around him, Shadid develops a view of the Middle East that is both haunting and encouraging: “Can we reclaim something that is lost? Honestly, I tried not to answer that in a straightforward way at the end of [House of Stone], because I think what we do is we imagine something that compensates for that loss. . . . And because there’s so much death, so much destruction, so much carnage, I have to ask: Is there a way to stop loss? Is there a way to reclaim what was lost? I still don’t know the answer. We have to think of it in a different way, and I think that’s where imagination comes in. It’s the question that haunted me going into this experience, and still sticks with me. How do we stand loss?” (51, 55).

PRESS RELEASELate Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Anthony Shadid Featured inWorld Literature Today

INTERVIEW"Reclaiming What Was Lost: A Conversation with Anthony Shadid," Matt Carney

NEW ESSAY"Impressions from meeting Oklahoma’s greatest journalist," Matt Carney